iPhone Wallpaper Template For Fireworks / Photoshop (Saucy)

It's Friday and I didn't feel too much like coding after I launched my POI customer tag library update. So I thought I would create a Wallpaper template for the iPhone in Adobe Fireworks. One of the problems I've found with the iPhone is that you find a cool picture and select it as your background only to find that it doesn't look nearly as good as you thought it would look on account of all the other junk that's on the screen. I've fooled around with the idea of creating some iPhone backgrounds and wallpapers, and to help me with that process, I wanted to see what the photo would look like before I actually even transferred or downloaded it to the iPhone. The only way to do that was to create a Fireworks PNG file that included the iPhone screen structures with accurate positioning and (fairly) accurate transparencies. This would allow me to see what the wallpaper would look like right from my Fireworks application. And so, here is what I created:

Were animated backgrounds even supported at first? Don't know. But no, I was remembering more all the marble variations they had, and wood grain. Of course, it made text unreadable. ;)

I can still remember when bgcolor came out, which I believe wasn't at the same time as background. I believe it came first with background a bit later. Just seeing _white_ was a pleasure to the eyes after so much time in gray.

When I first saw the title of your post, I thought that "Saucy" was the codename of an upcoming version of Fireworks. Like "Blackstone" or "Scorpio". I had completely forgotten about the whole not-safe-for-work encoding system you had devised!

From the way you two are going on it sounds like YOU'VE been "draining the batter".

:)

Good idea Ben. I used to use a Photoshop template that was similar. It had browser chrome for IE 4 and 5, and Netscape 4 and 5 set up for an 800x600 browser window. Made it really easy to see what a design was going to look like.

Probably not Ben if you're offering up a Fireworks PNG. Photoshop doesn't support layered PNG files (at least not that I'm aware of). It might be better if you saved this file as a layered PSD from within Fireworks, then offered that file on your site. That way pretty much everyone could open it.

I've never actually used Fireworks, but I've often been told it's very good, but I've probably got too much Photoshop muscle-memory built up now :)

You can't teach an old dog new tricks I guess.

Anyway, I put together a similar template for Photoshop users, in case anyone finds it useful. It differs from yours slightly, in that I have put a whole bunch of Apple logos in there as well, for people to create good looking wallpapers in a very short time.

I also agree with the comments here about having a wallpaper behind the main icons. It seems such a shame to spend time customising your phone with an image that you are only ever going to see for a fraction of a second before you unlock it.